THE GRACE OF BEING SMALL

This past week Pope Leo wrapped up a ten-day visit to Africa. Among the places that he visited was Algeria and the ancient port city of Hippo, from which St. Augustine hailed. North Africa was once a Christian stronghold; but today Algeria, like most of its neighbor nations, is 99% Muslim. Like his predecessor Pope Francis, Pope Leo is making time to visit places where Catholics ae a very small minority. While the Pope was there, Cardinal Cristobal Lopez Romero of Morocco was asked what it was like leading a flock that was so small and so scattered. He said, “To be small is not a disgrace, but a grace. It is not a tragedy . . . to be a small church in service of the Reign of God. Christian majority nations live in a state of calamity, because there is a decline in the number of those who adhere to the Catholic faith . . . It is a privilege to be the ‘little ones of which Jesus speaks, and we live that with joy and enthusiasm.”

What is the grace of being small? One of the graces of being small is that you realize that your life and example really matter. When I grew up in Memphis, the Catholic population stood at about 7%. Like North Africa, the percentage had once been greater, but as a result of the yellow fever epidemic in the late nineteenth century, European emigration ground to a halt. The growth of the city’s population was almost entirely due to people from the country moving to the city, and they were almost all Protestant. So, as a kid I was asked questions about being Catholic and endured some mockery for being Catholic. But I also grew up with a Catholic Church without the cynicism that I found when I came to Chicago, where the Catholic Church had more power and influence. Because most of your neighbors were not Catholic and devout people, you realized that Catholics were no more worthy of salvation than anyone else. So, of course, there was salvation outside the Catholic Church. And, when I ministered at an African-American parish in the 1990’s, I experienced the same two phenomena. At that time about 5% of the Black people in the United Staes were Catholic. If you did not join your voice to the Protestant churches around you, you had a very small voice indeed.

One story that has been circulating in the news lately is that the number of adults in the OCIA process and the number of participants in adult confirmation programs and the number of people attending Mass is growing. In Chicago, there has been a 20% increase in adults being baptized or received into the Catholic Church. This is a very hopeful sign and reflects our own experience at Assumption. But we should not lose track of the fact that the number of parishes in this archdiocese has declined from 447 in 1980 to 216 today and that the number of Catholics going to Mass has declined almost every year for the last fifty years. We are not headed back to the days when the people of Chicago (Catholic or not) identified themselves by the parish in which they lived. The last nail in that coffin was when the newly merged parishes chose a new name, and most people have no idea where any of the parishes are.

The hopeful part of this present trend is not that the Catholic Church in Chicago will regain the power, influence, and critical mass that it once had. The hope comes from the fact that a significant number of young adults are freely choosing to become Catholic. They are of a different mindset from so many of us in the past who were funneled through Catholic school or religion class and then graduated from church when we graduated from school. This is something they are choosing and not something parents chose for them.

When Jesus spoke about the Kingdom of God, he used very modest images. He likened us to the yeast that a woman kneads into a loaf of bread to make the whole loaf rise. We are like the salt that goes into bread that gives it flavor. We are not expected to be the whole loaf of bread or the bakery or the bread factory, but the ingredient that mixes in with the world around us to give the world what it needs to live life with purpose and direction, to experience the full flavor of what Jesus desires for us and ultimately to rise to new life. He compared us to a light set on a bushel basket that gives light to the people around it. We are not all the people around the light. We are the light that enables the people around us to discover their way. We are like the farmer who plants seeds of goodness all around us, in the hopes that some of them will take root in good soil. We are like the mustard seed that planted in the ground grows into a sizable bush—not a giant redwood or cedar of Lebanon, but bush large for people to find shelter and protection. Yes, there is a grace to being small. History shows that when we get too large and powerful we get used by the powers of the world. We lose our identity and forget what our real mission is. Yes, there is a grace in being small.

                                                                               Fr. Joe